March 2015

03/28/2015

Here I sit. My hair its usual mess, my face its usual tired, myself at my usual spot. I’m sitting in front of a computer that I’ve spent hours staring at. Hours and hours. Some hours working, some hours shopping for things that ought not to be bought, some hours Googling things that ought not to be googled. I could call myself a great “work from home employee”, if I was a great one. I could call myself a surfer but I’m rarely ever at the beach. Regardless, I wish my hair looked better.

So I sit here, where I usually am, but rather than working or surfing or buying, I am sitting here admitting that I don’t know anything anymore.

This is not a new thought. I have thought about it a lot. Too much. Maybe not enough. I sit here with the hope that these no doubt too many words may lead me to a path of answers. A sliver of 30 something year old Mom enlightenment. Maybe this one time my computer will prove itself more useful than its usual work and not work surfing. Maybe, just maybe, this computer will actually give me an answer for once, just once. I just want to know something, anything.

The problem stems from the fact that I used to know things. Lots of them! I used to be sure of myself and the world and what my life was all about. I used to wake up, the same time every day to the same alarm clock. I knew exactly when my day began and once it did, where I was going and once I got there, what my day would be like. Sure, things popped up occasionally but even those things were somewhat accounted for. Stuck in traffic? Darn that 405! That account didn’t close? Darn that client. It’s 5 O’clock already? Time to leave and at the end of my work day I knew exactly where I was going, back to where my perfectly planned day had started.

Sometimes I try to remember what it was like to just go home, all alone. To casually, not rushed or with arms full of kid stuff, just walk into a clean, empty house. Once I got my all alone self into my all alone house, what did I even do there? What must it have been like when my house was just a place to go when all my work was done? I used to know that. I really did.

I knew other things too. I knew that I wanted a family. I was married to a smart guy who would be a great Dad. We had a savings account, a house, 1 dog and 1 cat. I knew what I was doing and I knew how to make it happen. I knew how babies were made. I read, What To Expect When Expecting…and that’s what I expected. And it happened and I was expecting. I knew I would.

Even while I was pregnant I still knew a lot. I knew the color of the walls in the baby’s room. I knew that the baby was a boy and I knew what his name would be. I knew what car seat to buy. I knew what foods I couldn’t eat. I knew when my Dr’s appointments were and I knew about when he would be born.

And then he was born. And it was great!! That whole birth “thing” (lots of things in that thing for that matter..) was pretty awesome! (Does it make me really uncool to say that??) It was all going according to plan, just like I knew it would. I was so smart.

I knew so damn much! It must have been so damn nice.

The baby’s room was the perfect Martha Steward blue. The car seat was the top in safety ratings. I quit my job (b/c you HAVE to do that, right??)…but the baby cried.

I didn’t drink. I didn’t smoke. I didn’t eat cheese (b/c you CAN’T eat that right??)….but the baby wouldn’t let me set him down.

I breast feed for as long as I could…plus 2 months out of guilt (b/c you HAVE to do that, right??) but he wouldn’t eat.

We bought sheets and blankets (and for the love of God and science, NO pillows) specifically made for babies (b/c they HAVE to be, right???) but he didn’t sleep.

Slowly I began to realize what not knowing was like and I longed for those things that I used to know. I would’ve settled for a nice, long, traffic jam.

I no longer knew what time I was going to wake up. I had made my very own, one of a kind alarm clock and his name was Charlie.

When I was awake I wasn’t sure what I was even supposed to be doing. Shower? It’s what I used to do in the mornings and back then I didn’t have spit up in my hair….. Shave my legs? It’s what I used to do in the shower. Though I had no reason to shave them, I refused to stop. I couldn’t give it up. No one saw my legs but I knew they were shaved, it was my sliver of my sanity. My baby cried in his Boppi with the perfectly picked out safari baby print, (that meant nothing to the actual baby) while I tried to hold onto what I used to know. So I shaved my legs.

While the things I knew slowly faded away there was one thing I learned over and over and that was just how much I loved my new alarm clock. I loved him more than any home appliance, ever! I loved him more than any person, ever! In the middle of the night, in the middle of the day, he was all that I thought of. He was all that I worried and wanted for. His smells and soft skin made me sigh with delight (even the bad smells and baby skin rashes that only a mother could love). His baby gaze into my mommy eyes were the best moments of my life. Even when all I wanted was for him to go to sleep, I would stay and watch him. My human alarm clock snoozing away was my heaven. Smiles became my favorite sight. Giggles my favorite sound. I shaved my legs faster and faster…and then, some days not at all. I knew every little detail about my homemade human alarm clock and slowly those things took over everything I had ever known before.

Now, here I sit. My human alarm clock sleeps. He goes to bed at 8 and wakes up at 8. He knows how to talk, walk and write his name. He can count to 151, especially when you really don’t feel like listening to someone count to 151. He can tell you interesting facts about nearly every cold blooded creature. He can build a combo helicopter/airplane/submarine/monster truck with Legos. He can clean them up, but he probably won’t. He can make cereal, feed the dogs, make his bed and tell a great knock-knock joke (20 times in a row..).

He sleeps and I still watch. He looks at me and I still sigh. His laugh is the soundtrack to my happiness. After 5 and a half years he knows so many things and yet now he is all that I know. He will continue to learn new things and meet new people. Those people will slowly take his gaze more towards them and less towards me. I don’t want to know that. I know that I will though.

I sit here in front of this computer that I’ve spent hours at while my human alarm clock snoozes in his room with the moon and earth and the posters of lizards and snakes on his wall. He is growing up while I feel like I’m growing down. The things I know now literally make no sense.

This week I will set an actual alarm clock for the first time in nearly 6 years. I will wake up and take a shower and drink coffee out of a cup that has my name on it. I don’t know any of these things anymore. Sometimes I think I want to. Sometimes I think I should. Mostly I am scared.

But I know one thing, when I walk into my house at the end of my new work day, I will be in a rush and my arms will be full of kid stuff and I will listen to him tell me a knock-knock joke or count to 151 and my legs will be shaved.